As a product manager one of the hardest decisions after determining a feature set is to work with an interaction or industrial designer to figure out how to implement the actual feature so an end customer can use it. The general consensus is that a product should be "intuitive", but there isn't a consensus definition of what "intuitive" means without using the word itself.
The widely accepted definition is that something is intuitive (I will skip the quotes from now on, but for veracity you should imagine them every time you see the word from now on) is that one should be able to discern a features operation without explicit instruction or description about how it operates. In that definition is an assumption that the implementation of the feature will map to some established metaphor or model that is in your user's mind.
The original Xerox PARC Alto workstation used the metaphor of a desktop, since the Alto was meant to be a document automation device. It was meant to replace your table top, and hence the interface was represented as a office environment. It is profoundly ironic that the word computer itself implies a metaphor, that of a computation device. But aside from legions of Excel jockeys, few people actually do any conscious computing. It's more appropriate that in Europe, computer science programs are known as information sciences departments. Again a different metaphor.
Most user design now focuses on two sets of metaphors for their interface designs. The first is model are competitive products that have established the dominant metaphor or expectation. For newer products, they will choose a metaphor of what they are trying to duplicate, a desktop, a camera, a chair, etc. So choosing the right metaphor is key to making something intuitive. But as our products go more global, the larger question to ask is do all users share the same metaphors? Let me refine the question further, are there metaphors that are universal?
Before I answer that question, take a look at the following video on YouTube.
As you look at the video, consider the following, first the window is a real physical object, and second it is spinning only in one direction. No change in the direction of rotation is occurring. This optical illusion is known as an Ames Windows and I'll let you look at the Wikipedia entry to understand how it works.
I first encountered this illusion in James Maas's intro psych class at Cornell. After having my mind blown, it was blown up again when I was told that some people see through this optical illusion right away, and those people were Native Americans. The reason, they lived in a world where windows were circular. So their minds did not try to coerce what they saw in front of them to their mental models and hence did not suffer any dissonance.
The same thing happens when product managers or designers have to specify a feature or its implementation. When choosing your design, do you assume that your users see windows as rectangular objects, or is it that you and your co-workers do because you spend all your time in the domain.
It is commonly remarked that children pick up new technology quicker than adults. It really is a slight toward adults that children are so fast. When it truth, they come to new technology without any established expectations. They see an Ames Window as it is, not as what they expect. They don't know what a window is. Adult users despite their best efforts, cannot see through their assumptions despite their best efforts, just like you probably did not see through the Ames Window. I'll give another example, many products still represent the save operation with the floppy disk icon, but there is clearly a generation of users who have never seen a floppy disk. They just know it is a save button, but they don't know the origins.
So be cognizant of which metaphors are you unconsciously assuming. This is really clear when you look at websites between different countries, in particular between Asia and Western countries. Also be conscious of what other products have become the metaphoric model. Are you breaking too much with established expectations, can you set new ones.
A good way of understanding what the prevailing metaphors of your space will be how you and others describe your product. Google is search, Facebook is Social, LinkedIn is Business Social Networking. The "is" is a dead giveaway as the dominant metaphor. People talk about Bing as a Google competitor, Google Plus as a Facebook competitor, Android as a more inexpensive iPhone. Those are the metaphors that will govern user expectations. In every case, redefinition is hard. It's much better to create a new category. An iPod is an iPod, not an MP3 player. An iPad is an iPad, not a tablet. The goal is to understand the assumed metaphors while defining a new one.
As Jon Ostrander once wrote in the comic book series "Grim Jack" -- "you can hide from the truth, but you have to know it first." You can break from the established metaphor, but you have to know it first.
No comments:
Post a Comment